Breaking
by Northlight
Summary: Zack's deteriorating. Max isn't ready to let him go. (Max/Zack-ish)
1. Breaking 1: Revelations (1/1)

_ Title: Breaking   
Summary: Zack's deteriorating. Max isn't ready to let him go.  
Rating: PG13.  
Disclaimer: Cameron and Eglee.  
Date: March 18, 19 2001.  
Note: Woo hoo! My first Max/Zack pairing. It isn't exceptionally 'shippy, but it's there. _

* * *

Max rounded the corner cautiously, body held ready for battle. She stopped, his name escaping her in a shocked hiss of air. Max hadn't expected to see Zack again, not after the barely suppressed anger she had felt coiled about him before he and Tinga had departed. Max stamped down on her happiness at seeing Zack -- as much as she cared for him, being with Zack could be agony for her. He couldn't understand the life she had created for herself in Seattle, and Max hated the tension that snapped between them because of that. 

Zack sat on her bed, head bowed. A shiver of unease ran through Max when Zack remained motionless. Even amongst friends Zack always stood alert and ready. "Max," Zack greeted her. "I had wondered when you'd get back," he said, his voice utterly without censure. He sounded... muted, a dull white-washed version of the Zack she knew. 

Her fingers absently brushed against the neck of her black vest. She had spent the last three hours skulking around and kicking ass for Logan, saving the world yet again. She doubted that Zack would care to hear that, even though Max was sure he had a pretty firm idea of why she had been out. She could still smell traces of other people's blood against herself. "Why are you here, Zack?" Max asked, and her voice came out sharper than she had intended. 

"I need you, Max," Zack said and Max bit back a reply. He stood and Max caught sight of Zack's face for the first time that night. 

Max took an unconscious step forward. "Zack," she breathed. "What's wrong?" She had _never_ seen such an expression on Zack's face. Anger, determination, worry, pride, quicksilver flashes of pain, never -- Max shied away from placing name to emotion, unable to equate Zack with fear even within the privacy of her own mind. 

He smiled slightly, amused by her reaction. The twitch of his lips quickly smoothed back into a set line. He hooked his thumbs through the loops in his jeans, the motion drawing Max's attention to his finely trembling hands. Her eyes widened, jerking back up to search Zack's face. He shrugged and nodded once, slowly. "It's over, Max." 

"No!" Max exploded, flying across the distance between them. "You _will_ not!" 

Zack caught Max's wild hands by the wrists, held them still against his chest. "This isn't something that _either_ of us can fight, Max." 

"You could--" Max began before savagely biting off the rest of her sentence. Zack wouldn't. Once Zack had chosen to break ties with Manticore, the separation had been complete and irreversible. No longer their creators, their teachers or superiors, Lydecker and the rest of Manticore were solely enemies. Max closed her eyes and let her head fall forward to rest against Zack's shoulder. 

"I want you to look out for the others, Max. I know we haven't seen eye to eye on strategy in the past, but I think you're the only one who can--" 

Max jerked back, pulling her hands free from Zack's light grip. "Don't you _dare_, Zack. I'm not going to have to play leader because I will _not_ let you die, do you hear me!" She was glaring at him, fists clenched at her sides as if simply daring him to disagree. 

Zack snorted. "And how do you propose that we stop this, Max? Do you think I wouldn't be trying everything possible to stop this deterioration taking place inside of me if there _were_ anything? I don't want to leave the others to face Manticore alone. I don't want to leave you." 

Max ducked her head, dark hair briefly obscuring her face. As was her custom whenever Zack said something that hinted as to the emotions he held for her, Max ignored his final few words. "Logan," Max exclaimed, studiously ignoring the tightening along Zack's jaw at the name of the other man. She was so not getting into all that territorial male bullshit. "He's been looking for me, Zack. Logan must have a line on some of the Manticore doctors. They'll fix you up right fine." Fierce and determined Max kept her narrowed eyes focused on Zack. 'This is one battle you aren't going to win, soldier,' Max thought, full lips narrowing into a tight line. 

She nearly cried out in relief when Zack finally nodded. 

...~*~... 

Zack had spent his life being the strongest, fastest, the _best_. He had despised his Manticore trainers, even before he was truly old enough to know that life needn't be the hell it was within those grey walls. Despite those feelings, Zack had absorbed and clung to the lessons he had learned in his first nine years of life. Outside of Manticore for ten years, Zack still trained himself as arduously as had Lydecker. He refused to mellow, content in the superiority of his manufactured body. He ran, pumped weights, studied new and old fighting techniques alike and pitted his strategic skills in games against former military operatives. 

Weakness was something which got you killed. Weakness was freezing to death, opening your mouth to a lung-full of water, tumbling from beams high in the air and screaming to the netless floor. He had grown up being trained to be strong and watching those judged inferior be led away, one by one, small bodies disappearing behind swinging doors. Weakness was not something Zack accepted in himself. Any hint of such a flaw as he perceived in himself, Zack attacked with fierce determination, resolved to defeat his own body or mind's imperfections. 

He had never even been at ease with allowing his brothers and sisters to see any hint of weakness. They were under his command, and they needed to be able to depend on him. They needed to be able to trust his judgment and his body's ability to carry out the same tasks he was ordering them to fulfill. And he stood tense and silent in the luxurious home of the normal-strengthed, wheelchair bound man Max had put all of her trust into. The very thought grated at his nerves. 

Max and Logan were at the computers, scrolling through every bit of information Logan had collected about Manticore and all related institutions and activities. Zack hadn't been tempted to join them. He had seen the grin on Logan's face when he saw Max and the woman's answering smile. It hadn't helped that Logan's smile had faded when he spotted Zack, or that Max's smile had been tight, nearly automatic and stripped of any real joyous emotions. Max was one weakness he couldn't best, no matter what action he had taken: hiding from her, approaching her, suffering through Logan's presence -- and still he ached with unwelcome but unshakable emotions. 

Zack stood at the window, his body partially shielded behind the wall next to it. He still could hear the rise and fall of Logan's voice, Max's quick replies. He had known pain before, more than most people in all likelihood. It had been sharp, sudden physical pain -- never this steady, unseen pain that had settled into his head, behind his eyes, and into his aching muscles. He focused on the dispersed, constant throbbing, learning to endure and defeat this new form of suffering. 

...~*~... 

Max had hardly closed her eyes for half an hour before she heard Zack rise off the couch. Bare feet slapped against the floor as Zack moved towards the washroom. Max sat up in bed and lowered her feet to the floor. She ghosted through her home and stood in the opened bathroom door. Zack stood before the mirror, spat blood into the sink. He met her eyes in the mirror. "Go back to bed, Max." 

She snorted at the order. "I think not. You ain't bossing me around in my own home, Zack." Max paused and shrugged. "I was awake, anyway." She wanted to ask if Zack was all right, but she didn't think that he would appreciate the inquiry, and it was a dumb question in any case. He was spiting blood, was _dying_ -- no fucking way could he answer with a truthful "fine." Max sometimes wished she was the kind of person who bought into meaningless reassurances. 

Jeans were a real bitch to sleep in. When they got back from Logan's, Max had scrounged through the boxes of junk she had settled against a wall in the rear of the apartment. Triumphant, she had emerged with a pair of black sweatpants one of her former boyfriends had left in her apartment before her personality and lack of any real interest had driven him towards escape. Bare chested and bare footed, his hair tousled with sleep, Zack nearly looked like someone Max had brought home with her in one of her friskier moods. She banished that thought and took a deep, cleansing breath before abandoning her post in the bathroom doorway. 

"Why'd you come to me?" Max asked, claiming the opposite end of the couch from Zack. She pulled her legs under her body, folding one slim arm atop the side of the couch. 

Zack's legs were flung out before him, crossed at the ankles. His hands lay clasped against his stomach. It was a casual, comfortable pose. Zack was anything but. He lay his head against the back of the couch, his throat working as he swallowed. "Like I said, I figured you were the best one to take over if I don't make it. You're smart, Max. You're unpredictable." There was a slight undercurrent of bitterness running beneath his words, and Zack was left choking on the truth he knew Max didn't want to hear from him. 

Max absently traced designs against the worn fabric of the couch with her glossed fingernails. "I knew that you were out there. I wondered what you were up to..." Max grinned suddenly, "I wondered how the poster-boy for control was doing loose in this fucked up world of ours." She paused, cast a quick glance in the direction of Zack's still face. "I missed you, you know. And I do appreciate all that you've done for us, Zack, don't think that I don't." 

He didn't look at her. "Good night, Max." 

What _was_ it with him! Max wondered. "What the hell crawled up your butt?" she growled at Zack, stinging at his apparent dismissal of her declared appreciation towards him. 

"Don't," Zack warned her, his voice sharp. "You don't want to get into this now. _Ever_," and his words held a snarl. 

"Maybe I do!" Max shot back, suddenly too anxious to sit next to him. She rose, stalked several steps away from Zack before rounding on her heels to face him, balled hands on her hips. "Let's just clear all this garbage out of our way. I can't stand this anymore!" 

Zack had risen as well, his face carefully stripped of emotion. Manticore face, she thought: show no weakness. "I don't want your _appreciation_, Max. I don't want you to think of me as nothing more than a piece of your past transported into this perfect life you've created for yourself. I don't want you to tell me you care simply because you're grateful that I've been watching your back for my whole fucking life!" 

"What else do you want from me?" God, she _hated_ him! Why did he have to make everything so difficult between them? Couldn't he simply understand that things were good the way they were? 

Zack's shirt was flung over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, his boots and socks tumbled on the floor next to the table. He grabbed at his shirt. His head disappeared beneath the cloth, his expression chilly when his face was once again exposed to her. "Do you want to know how I spent the years after the escape? I spent them thinking of you. I remembered that you had made me feel human while we were in Manticore. I thought that once I'd found you again, I finally would be free." 

"I'm sorry," Max said, her voice low, shocked into softness by Zack's words. "I didn't know." 

"I figured." He pulled his boot laces -- tight -- and laced them quickly. 

"Zack!" Max cried out when Zack moved towards the apartment's front door. "You can't just leave. Logan's looking--" 

Zack shook his head. "I don't need to be here while he looks. I'll stay in touch." 

"You're running away," Max accused. 

"Strategic retreat," Zack countered. "I can't win with you, Max." No matter what he did -- hid from her, ignored his feelings, revealed them -- she made him weak with need. Max was one weakness he didn't have the ability to best. And he wasn't about to break before her. 

"This isn't about winning." 

"Not when you're the one who is ahead." 

Useless, childish, unprofessional, and Max didn't give a damn. She threw one of the glasses left on the table at the closing door, the shattering drowning out the click of the door as it shut. 

~end~ 


	2. Breaking 2: Foolish (1/1)

_Title: Breaking (2)  
Summary: Zack's deteriorating. Max isn't ready to let him go.  
Rating: PG13.  
Disclaimer: Cameron and Eglee.  
Date: March 20 2001. _

* * *

Zack used to be good at control. He had seethed with rage and hatred against Lydecker, against Manticore, against the death that chipped away at his family child by child. He had been able to keep his emotions in check. Del had panicked, foot chained to the bottom of the pool, his mouth opening wide in an airless gasp. Zack had held himself still, emotions sparking white hot within him but had kept his expression neutral, his body dedicated to the task Lydecker had set before them. Trish had hurried across the beams set high towards the ceiling. Her arms had windmilled, left foot swinging out above empty air, trying to find its way back to safety. She had screamed all the way to the ground. They had filed past her body, never breaking from their stride as they stepped into the range of wide opened eyes. 

This world gave no boundaries to his emotions. In Manticore, survival had dictated that he be in control every moment. Things had been simple in Manticore. He had known who he was and where he stood. He was a soldier. He would act or he would die. He was a leader, and the lives of the others rested upon his abilities. The outside world was messy with boundaries too loose to contain him, rules that he couldn't quite grasp. He was a soldier, but he couldn't be solely that. He had to make money, interact with civilians, pull normalcy around him like an ill-fitted cloak. He was a leader to men and women who struggled against his orders. 

The world he lived in had forced him to confront the fact that despite his genetically enhanced body, he was still painfully human. Max had made that humanity real, something he could not avoid and could not deny. He didn't feel like a soldier around her, or a fugitive -- he felt like a man, as confused and vulnerable as any he had ever known. 

He had left Max to tear apart her apartment in anger, choking on an upsurge of bitterness as he retreated from her. Zack had headed away on foot, needing to burn away his emotions on sustained physical activity. He ran through the darkened streets with an easy, animal grace. He had listened to the sound of his boots pounding rhythmically on the litter-scattered pavement and the slightly accelerated beat of his heart. Zack had still been able to think, to feel, and he had speed up, moving with such speed that his feet barely touched the ground. He wanted to move upwards, seat himself somewhere high above the world where he could feel crisp air against his face, see the city spilled out beneath his sharp eyes. 

His body rebelled in a sudden, ferocious attack. Tremors claimed his body, made his flying form turn clumsy. Zack tumbled forward as the force of the shudders made him lose his stride. He caught himself before he fell, pride keeping him upright. He had thought Brin thoughtless, careless in her actions. Zack began to understand what must have made her break from procedure. Brin had sought his aid, safety and salvation through him. And as the first tremors had crept across his body, he had sought out Max in turn, searching for salvation in her. He hadn't been able to save Brin. And Max... Max would never be able to provide him with what he required. 

Zack cursed himself as a fool. 

...~*~... 

She was a fool, Max thought with disgust. Max picked her way across the broken glass littering the floor (and there went a nice chunk of her salary on new glasses) and flopped down into the couch she had first confronted Zack on. She flung her bare arm over her eyes, one fisted hand resting against her clenched jaw. Zack had warned her not to push. She should have known better than to do so. It wasn't even as if she hadn't known precisely what would finally be drawn out into the open. Sometimes, Max hated Logan for having told her that Zack felt more than a brotherly affection towards her. 

That knowledge had rooted its way deep into Max's mind, resistant to her most strenuous efforts to remove it. She picked at the idea of Zack's love, fascinated and horrified at once. And though Max wondered as to the why and how of Zack's affection, she had until that point avoided directly calling him on his feelings. In her own thoughts, she could transform his feelings back into what she had always thought they should be. She could hide them from herself when they became too much to think about. They were an abstraction in her mind, theoretical, a possibility belonging to a not quite real Zack. 

When she wasn't refiguring them or hiding from them, Max had decided that if Zack really did love her it obviously had to be physically based. She knew that she was a beautiful woman, and Zack hadn't grown into adulthood with her, hadn't had time to become accustomed to the changes within her. He told her that she was his humanity, his doorway into a freedom of heart and spirit as well as body. Max hadn't been prepared for that. Lust she could have dealt with. Bring attraction into the open, gently turn him down and work themselves back into a relationship she was comfortable with. 

And he'd had to go and be meaningful. 

"Well, damn," Max muttered. With sudden ferocity, she lunged back up, flinging herself off the couch. She had forced this into the open, and it was far too late to pretend this hadn't happened or that she hadn't understood what Zack was saying. They had to clear things up _now_ before thoughts and feelings had time to rot in silence. Max needed Zack. He needed her. He had come to her with his deteriorating body, his new emotions and concerns. She couldn't let him slip away from her in anger and hurt. 

The sky was lightening by the time Max found Zack. He had climbed to the roof of an elementary school several miles away from Max's apartment. The two of them had always climbed when they thought. Space and air and the rest of the world fallen far and small behind them, beyond the easy reach of normal humans. A shock of memory welled up within Max. She remembered watching the ground, blurring and jumping beyond her watering eyes. Zack at her back and she had looked at him, defiant, daring him to speak out against her display. He had touched her cheek, amazed at her emotion. 

Max sat beside Zack, arms drawn tight around her knees, hugging them to her chest. Zack's hands were twitching against his legs. Max could see scrapes against his hands. She concentrated on breathing, on watching the rise and fall of Zack's chest, the slight movements of his shoulders. "It's okay, Zack," Max murmured. 

"I'd stop if I could," he told her. 

What could she say to that? She had wanted him to stop, to play big brother and not the would-be suitor. Max didn't know what she felt anymore. Everything had been clear once, but all of this had changed her in some way, the extents of those changes unclear even to Max herself. She couldn't love Zack. There was Logan. There was the fact that Zack pissed her off to no end most of the time. Max's hand crept outwards to grip Zack's. Her fingers wound with his. He was warm and solid against her, an intense familiarity born out of something not entirely human. 

Zack was still so powerfully rooted in Manticore. Max had spent ten years of her life trying to forget that hell. She would not open herself to Zack, would not let his intensity, his Manticore-forged reality take away the normalcy she had created. 

Zack squeezed Max's hand briefly before letting go. 

"Come back with me?" Max offered, watching Zack's back as he rose. 

He shook his head, not looking at her. "I don't think that's a good idea." 

"Where will you go?" Max asked. She rose, arms wrapped around her waist, shoulders hunched forward slightly. 

Zack had put himself away bit by bit, locked the man back inside the soldier. He was keeping her safe from him, or the other way around, or both -- Max wasn't sure how it worked anymore. That was for the best, wasn't it? No messy, disruptive emotions between them. She missed the glimpse of the man. It hurt to realize that she knew the child Zack had been and the soldier he tried to remain, but she knew so little of his life and thoughts. As much as Zack the soldier could irritate her, she had kept him inside that form, not looking for hints as to how he had been changed in the years since she had seen him. 

"I should see the others, tell them what's going on. I'll stay in touch with Logan." 

Not her. "Oh." Max touched Zack's shoulder tentatively. He turned to face her. "We'll get you through this, Zack." 

His hand rose, brushed against her cheek. "Yeah. You take care of yourself, Max." 

...~*~... 

Zack had first seen Max when she was fifteen years old. She had been so very lovely in the squalor around them. She had been standing with a bag slung over her shoulder, one hip jutting out as she rested her weight on one foot. Max had curled a long lock of dark hair around her finger before tucking the strand behind her ear. She had nibbled at her bottom lip, casting an impatient glance at the watch at her wrist. Zack had stood frozen for a moment, watching her. The line Max was standing in began to move and Zack broke forward. A bus. She was leaving. He had been stopped by a cop, more bored than suspicious. Zack had known that he needed to reach Max. He pulled out of the older man's grip, moved forward, pushing through the crowds. He hadn't caught Max. For his effort, he had ended up in a holding cell, a picture of his barcode filed away in the station. 

His memory had been made perfect. Max was bright and sharp in his mind. 

There was a dream in which he found Max again. She saw him and felt that same surge of _rightness_ that he had in that momentary glimpse of her. He imagined the brush of soft flesh beneath his hands. The delighted curve of lips. He hadn't seen Max smile in Manticore. He hungered for the sight of such an expression on the solemn face of the girl he had known. He had imagined holding her body tight and fierce against his own, Max's arms wrapping strong and welcoming around him. 

They had gone back to Max's apartment long enough for him to get his motorcycle. He had wanted to kiss her. She wouldn't have welcomed that, had made that perfectly clear time and time again. And his wants were immaterial. He was a soldier. He had duty and strategy and Manticore burning in his soul. Of what use were dreams and love and touch to one such as him. Zack had settled onto his motorcycle, nodded at Max in place of a kiss before pulling his helmet onto his head. 

Maybe she had watched him drive away, eyes latched onto him until even her eyes lost him to the distance. She probably hadn't. He didn't look back to see. 

~end~ 


End file.
